


Divided Souls

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Professional BAMF, Spies & Secret Agents, Tough Guys with Marshmallow Hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 09:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3645693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment of crisis has been reached for Mr. Spence and Lestrade. Or Mycroft Holmes and Lestrade. Depending on how you look at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divided Souls

Mr. Spence…

No. Mycroft Holmes dug into the pocket of his trousers and drew out the tangle of keys fastened to a drab little remote control keychain. He turned to his brother, shoving the mess toward him. “Here, Sherlock. Drive the car back to the cottage. You can start organizing things from there.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and his face set into a mulish scowl Mycroft knew only too well. “They’ve already struck here once, and they’re armed—as Garwood’s stupid chicken learned the hard way. You’re not staying here.”

Mycroft drew himself taller, ignoring the fact that he was ill-costumed to try to play this scene with any real _gravitas_. Baggy old-man chinos, pull-on old-man tennis shoes, a rather limp long-sleeved shirt smudged with tiny specks and smears of chicken blood and black dog hairs… a faint trace of zinc ointment left on his face where Lestrade had tried to wipe it away… And the stage to play it on? A little working-class kitchen in an old terraced building with a fretful Scottish terrier running around his ankles?

No. He was far from Whitehall and far from his pristine bespoke pinstripe suit. And yet he spoke, and the voice that once commanded respect around the globe still commanded respect.

“I am as likely to be shot there as here. Leave, Sherlock.”

Sherlock glanced at Lestrade and said, a bit hesitantly, “Better he comes with you to your place. Then I…we can protect you.”

“No, you can’t,” Mycroft said. “Don’t be an idiot. Until we’ve got some kind of plan in place, I’m a target no matter where I am, and no matter who is with me. If they wanted me dead now, I’d be dead, Sherlock. If they want me dead in ten minutes—I’ll be dead in ten minutes. At the moment your presence only makes it easier for them—they can kill me and my witnesses in one place, at one time. Go. Start contacting your allies. Start working through a plan. Greg and I will be along later.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to argue further, but Greg rumbled a firm, determined, “Go, lad.”

Sherlock shot him an evil glare. “I’m hardly a lad, Gatlin.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Lestrade said, exasperated. “Go, dammit. Scramble. Scarper.”

“Scuttle,” Mycroft said, using his most forbidding tones. “And don’t look back. We’ll catch up with you in our own time.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, looked about to make some sort of toxic comment about the two older men’s alliance—and apparently thought better of it. He swiped the keys from Mycroft’s hands, flounced dramatically, and was gone, muttering under his breath the whole time. The door slammed behind him as he left.

The little flat was quiet. In the back yard the chickens murmured and fussed. Mycroft looked out and noted with a cool detachment that they were foraging in the grass, almost certainly eagerly eating scraps of their former sister.

Chickens were not known for their sentiment. Neither, though, was Mycroft Holmes.

Which made it a bit of a mystery why a vast, terrifying grief was welling up inside. Strange chemicals flooded his bloodstream, provoking a longing for tears—a yearning for a dark corner to huddle in. Hedwig, a rather sweet if not particularly intelligent hen, was dead…

And Mr. Spence was dying.

Mycroft wasn’t sure even that was accurate. He had a dark suspicion that Mr. Spence was already dead, as completely obliterated as Hedwig. There was no question that the man now standing in the middle of Lestrade’s little home was Mycroft Holmes, not Mr. Spence. He could feel the persona of Mr. Spence fall away into the abyss: the quiet little man who made his living doing nothing more dangerous or vital than design websites for people: a bit of graphic art, a bit of coding, a lot of flow charts. A career a man could pursue from the security of his own home, far from cubicles and irksome middle management.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Spence,” Lestrade said, gently.

“Mr. Spence’s life is over, I’m afraid,” Mycroft said. He straightened and forced himself to look at Lestrade, eye to eye. “I wish it weren’t so. But if they’ve found me, and are still hunting me…” He looked away. “He was, in the end, only another role.”

Lestrade made a sound two-parts disagreement and one part distress. “Mike…”

Mycroft snorted. “Yes. Exactly. Mr. Spence is dead. Long live Mycroft Holmes.”

Archie, down by his ankles, whined. Mycroft forced himself to ignore the dog, pushing the connection away from him, already working to cut the ties of affection and obligation. Where Mycroft Holmes was going, there would be no place for Archie.

The thought caused a cascade of logical extensions to tumble through a mind already roiling with logistical concerns. He would have to have someone arrange for Archie and Dominic and the half-feral orange moggie to be looked after when he was gone. New homes found—good new homes. He could hardly just abandon them, though it would be the more expedient answer. He had backup identities already seeded into place. He had spare ID hidden in the rafters of his cottage. One command sent to hidden servers and soon there would be viral programs breathing new life into one of his other avatars. A week from now maybe he would be Ben Turpin, an accountant from Kent with a nice little retirement flat in Cornwall, where the weather was warm enough for palm trees.

Granted, fairly hardy palm trees…

Lestrade had said nothing. Instead, he turned to the sink, and turned on the tap. He reached for the dish soap, squirted a dab into his hands, and began washing himself—hands, forearms, biceps. He was speckled with Hedwig’s blood and feathers, after having tried to clean the back garden and patio. The plumbing was old and noisy. Lestrade was slow and patient, searching out each rusty speck.

Mycroft turned to look at him. He’d seen that face before. He’d seen it over bodies at Met crime sites. He’d seen it during the few actual actions he and Lestrade had experienced together as spies. He’d seen it as he took control of his own back garden, and drew calm out of the shock and chaos that had reigned when they’d come in that afternoon.

He had on his copper’s face. Patient. Calm. Strong. Centered.

Mycroft was no idiot. He knew what that kind of face hid far too well. After all, that copper’s face was not so far removed from his own still Iceman persona.

“Greg?”

He had seldom called Lestrade that. They’d been careful of each other. They’d been walking so cautiously toward a resolution, with such fearful awe….

He cleared his throat, and said, again, “Greg?”

Lestrade nodded. “Yeah. I hear you. Just—gathering myself.”

Mycroft nodded.

Lestrade finished washing his arms and hands. He stripped out of his t-shirt, and balled it up, leaving it on the counter. He went out and fished a clean shirt out of a plastic laundry hamper on the stairway up, and pulled it on.

Mycroft watched every move, trying not to think that this was now both the first and the last time he’d be so near to touching Greg Lestrade’s bare chest, bare arms, bare stomach. The last time he's see the grizzled hair on his chest. When Lestrade turned to face him, though, he said, softly, “I quite liked being Mr. Spence, you know. Especially...especially after you found him.”

Lestrade frowned. Then he said with every bit as much gravitas as Mycroft had managed, “He’s not gone.” He looked away, a fast, pained avoidance. Then he looked back and said, “Mr. Spence—he’s not dead. You know he’s not, Mike. No more than Mycroft was dead before today. They’re both you….and we’re going to keep both of you alive. You understand, you goddamn plonker?”

Mycroft didn’t know what to say…mainly because he felt far too much, and he was quite unused to allowing himself that kind of emotionality.

He was Mycroft Holmes. Granted, he was Mycroft Holmes stripped of all his pride and power and glory. A veritable King Lear of a Mycroft Holmes. Oh, he could draw on some funds—more given time to tiptoe his way around a number of secret accounts. But he’d never been so much a rich man, as a man with access to riches--just as he had never been a man with friends, but with access to other people’s friends. He had held power as a Prime Minister holds power, by public grant and private patronage, and he had walked away from all that when he’d chosen to die previously. Now, reborn, he was almost as naked as any other child.

After all, you can’t take it with you…

He’d have to take on the current threats with little but his wits and Sherlock’s associates to help him.

Yet he was still Mycroft Holmes.

He sighed. He looked down at Archie running around his ankles. “I’d ask you to see to finding a home for Archie and Dominic and the cat who walks by himself. But we’re probably going to have to find a way to hide you, too.” At last, reluctantly, he picked up the little dog, who squirmed frantically, trying to cuddle close and lick, looking for reassurance. He ran one slim, long-fingered hand over the dome of the dog’s skull, and said, forlornly, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t clear if he was apologizing to Archie or Lestrade. “I should never have been so self-indulgent. Keeping pets.”

Lestrade growled. “Mike…”

Mycroft walked out into the sitting room, saying only, “Oh, not you. But I should have turned you away when you showed up. I owed you that much. I don’t know what resources Sherlock and I can raise between us, but I promise, you’re going to be taken care of.”

“Just what I always wanted. To be taken care of.”

Mycroft looked back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I never…” His voice trailed off. He looked away again, bending over the dog in his arms. “Oh, bugger,” he said.

His voice shook, and he knew that Mr. Spence was unwilling to go gentle into that good night—for if Mycroft Holmes knew how not to care, Mr. Spence cared entirely too much, and was not willing to let go of what he’d come to love.

“There’s got to be a better answer,” Lestrade said, sounding sensible and very copper-pragmatic. “I mean, really, Mike. You can’t spend the next thirty years playing ‘who-am-I-this-week.’ You’re doing more undercover work now than you were when they actually paid you for it.”

“People are hunting me.”

“But not killing you,” Lestrade said, following Mycroft out into the sitting room. When the other man didn’t turn or respond, he put his hands on Mycroft’s shoulders and began to lever him—not enough to actually turn him by brute force, but enough to put the pressure on. “Look at me, you prat. Come on—that’s right. Now, listen, Mycroft Holmes isn’t the only one with brains and resources—Mr. Spence has his own backers. To begin with, I’m willing to bet Luke and the boys aren’t going to be too happy to hear someone’s after their local secret squirrel (retired).”

“That’s assuming they’re not the source of the leak,” Mycroft said.

“Yeah, well. Sherlock can help figure out how to check that. But, look—you’ve got friends. You’ve got allies. You’ve got me. You’ve got Sherlock. And you’ve got old age and treachery…never forget the old age and treachery.”

“Actually, I usually tried to avoid treachery.”

“Prat. You know what I mean. Look—you may still have to disappear. But whatever you do—you’ll win, and not just because you’re Mycroft. You’re Mr. Spence, too—and Mr. Spence is pretty special in his own right.”

They looked at each other then.

The past months lay between them, unspoken of—but not needing to be spoken of. They had never made love. They hadn’t yet kissed. Yet they had known they would, in time. Until today there had been no rush. Until today they’d both been ready to reach that point when it arrived. The silences between them had grown richer, and more charged. The sweetness had lingered on their palates. The light had been burned on their retinas, leaving impressions that lasted even when their eyes were closed.

Mycroft could remember an afternoon when he and Lestrade had played cards at Lestrade’s little dining table. It had been a complicated game with multiple decks and cascading tricks and bids made on how many tricks you’d earn, and obscure penalties for particular cards and peculiar benefits for others. Lestrade had learned it as a student training for the Met, and he called it “Hand and Foot.” They had played for hours, together, the bedroom above them a silent question mark, the pleasure of the sitting room a responding answer. Every trick had been as good as a kiss. Every smile shared had made orgasms seem rather secondary.

Lestrade’s hands still gripped Mycroft’s shoulders. Mycroft stopped patting Archie’s head, and instead placed his hand over Lestrade’s. “I’m going to miss you,” he said.

“You don’t know that. We may sort it out.”

Mycroft grimaced—then shrugged a rueful surrender. “Maybe,” he said. Then he straightened and looked his friend in the eye. “Lestrade?”

“Yes?”

He drew his breath, and steeled his nerve. “Mr. Spence… I… You should know. Mr. Spence loved…loves you.”

Lestrade drew a shaky breath of his own. “Ah. Erm… And Mycroft Holmes? What does he think of me?”

“You’re the one who says they’re the same man.” Mycroft looked uneasily out the windows looking onto the back garden. “Mycroft has rather a bad reputation in that area. You might not want him making the attempt in the first place.”

“Mike…”

Mycroft looked back, again, a faint ember of panic blooming in his eyes. “I don’t know how to be both at once. Lestrade, I’m quite, quite good at not caring. Mr. Spence…well. Not so much. But right now, we need me to be Mycroft.”

Lestrade nodded. “I know.”

Mycroft’s chin set, then. “But…I can do one thing as both.” His hand slid from Lestrade’s knuckles, up his hand, up his wrist, up his arm, until it rested in the nape of Lestrade’s neck. He pulled, softly. “Mr. Spence was going to do this one day, you know. If you let him…” He pulled a bit more firmly, and leaned closer.

Lestrade hesitated, unsure, unnerved. “I haven’t…”

“I know,” Mycroft said. His eyes closed. “Will you anyway? While we know there’s still time?”

Lestrade huffed, air knocked out of him by nerves. Then, quietly, he said, “Yeah. Ok,” and allowed himself to be drawn closer to Mycroft.

It was a tentative kiss…dry, pensive, dressed in lavender half-mourning. Each man considered. Each explored. There was little tongue, and what tongue there was consisted of delicate, wary dabs, as dainty as a cat’s dry lapping. They nuzzled softly against each other’s mouths, their lips caressed each other’s cheeks. They leaned their faces together in companionable ease.

“We would have been lovers, I think,” Mycroft said. “Someday. In our own time.”

“Probably,” Lestrade said, eyes shut as he considered the kiss. “May yet be.”

“We can but hope,” Mycroft said.

They drew away, then.

“I’ll put feed out for the hens,” Lestrade said. “And see about having them sent along to one of the farms if I have to leave suddenly.”

“Good. Is there anything here you can’t leave behind?”

“Kind of like to keep the guitar. Any chance I can escape with you? Both go under cover?”

“Bad strategy—twice as easy to find,” Mycroft said, regretfully. “But—maybe. We can at least consider the options.”

They moved around, preparing to close the little flat down for who knew how long.

Packing his guitar into a clamshell case, Lestrade said, without looking up, “Just so you know—I love Mr. Spence.”

Mycroft, who was locking all the windows down tight, grunted acknowledgement, then asked, shyly, “And Mycroft Holmes? What do you think of him?”

Lestrade smiled. “I think I drove all the way out to fucking Manchester to find him almost three years after he died,” he said.

“I see,” Mycroft said softly….and he did.


End file.
